Fool

The Jester is the summit of the path and its name. The step to which all the previous ones lead: from the diviner who reads fate in cards, to one who is able to deceive fate itself.

As a deity, the Jester is extremely one-sided, and the canon says so directly: he is capable of destroying a star, but cannot meet it face to face. Merits and weaknesses are expressed equally sharply — his defense is weaker than that of most zero steps, and a real star would simply have devoured his body on the spot.

The Jester path stands under the Lord of Mysteries, and this branch is the best of all at wielding symbolism. In the domain of the mind, the Jester holds the symbol of Blind Foolishness, and from it grows the first key authority — Fooling. It absorbs shares of History, Time, Fate, Changes, and Concealment, and its essence is one thing: turning lies into truth.

History he fools by separating himself one second from his next self, and swaps his own past, present, and future;

Time — he confuses the order of events, delays the action of otherworldly forces, as if breaking free from its grip, and moves through gaps, real or speculative, in a frozen surroundings;

Changes — he causes major changes around himself, relying on certain concepts;

and since Blind Foolishness lies in the domain of the mind, the authority overlaps with the Mind of the Seer path and allows influencing the minds of the living.

This also has a strict condition: for a lie to become truth, that lie must first exist. The Jester does not create from emptiness — he substitutes what has already been said and done.

The second key authority is Reassembly, born from the interaction of the symbols of Changes and Strangeness. With it he fuses objects, creatures, and abstract concepts between which there was no connection whatsoever — including himself — and obtains impossible, yet entirely real consequences.

Beyond that, he also holds:

dominion over the Spirit World — unlike the Door, which uses it for travel, and the Error, to which it is needed for deciphering, the Jester holds most of the authorities of this domain and is considered a lesser version of the Lord of the Spirit World;

History — from the fusion of the symbolism of the King of Space-Time and Strangeness; the past is unchangeable, but the Jester can temporarily fool it;

Miracles — the authority of the symbolism of the Unimaginable: a miracle is a miracle precisely because it is inexplicable;

Kingdom of Mysteries — a completed Divine Kingdom, where things are substituted in such a way that taking it by force is almost impossible;

Anchor of Fate — the fate of such an anchor is extremely difficult to change, and if the Jester does not restrain himself, his words become knots of the future in the River of Fate: what is said will come true, though by what path and into what it will turn — may prove to be greatly distorted;

Reincarnation — another authority under the symbol of Changes.

The ascension ritual here is shorter than any other on the path and at the same time more unfulfillable than all of them: to deceive time, history, or fate — once. Neither a list of steps nor a list of materials; all that is required is to accomplish the impossible and to accomplish it for real.

The bearer of this step is known on the Russian internet as Mr. Jester — the one who sits above the gray fog at a long table and to whom those who divine address themselves. This path is walked by Klein Moretti, with whose first divination the whole story begins.